


The Sun and the Stars in the Same Sky

by Mithen



Category: Lions of Al-Rassan - Guy Gavriel Kay
Genre: Angst, Carnival, Comrades in Arms, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-24
Updated: 2012-07-24
Packaged: 2017-11-10 15:07:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/467654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is Carnival night in Ragosa:  a stag pauses an extra moment outside a lit window and many events fall into a different pattern.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sun and the Stars in the Same Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gentlezombie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gentlezombie/gifts).



A stag was walking through the night, through the Carnival of Ragosa. Around him was a throng of animals, their eyes gleaming strange and human beneath the masks: boars and eagles, swans and frogs. There was laughter and embracing: tonight of all the nights in the world, nothing was forbidden.

The stag was following a white owl as she wandered the streets, her movements seemingly random. He knew they were not, and he knew she knew it as well. The blue moon of mystery was high in the sky, the white moon of clarity a pale fingernail-mark in the darkness. Ashar's stars studded the night. The sun was nowhere to be seen.

And yet both the stag and the owl were drawn, as if by its invisible warmth, to a lone lighted window high in the army barracks.

The stag waited in the shadows, watching the owl look up at the light. He waited a long time, and discovered he was holding his breath, the night itself seemed to be holding its breath, waiting. He tried not to think of the various ways the world would be emptier if she went to that light. And then, because it was Carnival and a night of both masks and honesty, he forced himself to face both forms of desolation and accept them.

Then she shrugged, and with that motion was an owl no longer, was Jehane. She turned from the lonely light of the window and walked away, and the stag watched her go. He paused, looking after her, and found his gaze drawn back to the single lit window. Upstairs a man was writing, his strong blunt soldier's hands putting thoughts into ink, and it was altogether possible he had no thought at all for what was going on beneath his window, for the sighs and whispers of Carnival. It was possible. The stag hesitated a moment longer, and in that moment the casement window opened and a man looked down.

Rodrigo Belmonte stood, limned by lamplight, his gaze cast down to the street below. People passed by in pairs and groups, but his eyes--they were gray, Ammar knew, and keen as a blade--went immediately to the stag half in shadows. Eyes with small lines around them, from gazing into harsh desert sun. Eyes that saw far too much. Ammar realized he had made an involuntary, abortive motion back into the shadows, and knew Rodrigo had seen that too.

After a moment, Rodrigo turned and went back into his room. The stag moved back into the crowd, away from the lit window, under the mocking light of the stars.

It wasn't long until he knew he was being followed. A wolf, lean and gray with broad shoulders, slipped through the throng after him. Ammar doubled back, passing close enough to see a gleam of gray eyes through the slits of the mask. The carved face of the wolf was grave and predatory, but Ammar knew laughter in the set of the human shoulders.

A dance, then. Different from the one they'd danced together against the five best captains of Ragosa, under the cloudless autumn sky.

 _Or perhaps not so different after all,_ Ammar thought, remembering the unsettling exhilaration of those moments, the knowledge that whatever move he made, the other man would match it and complement it, as if they were two blades wielded by one soul. He turned left without warning, into a small alley lined with climbing roses, and the wolf pivoted in perfect harmony with him. Ammar's heartbeat seemed uneven, strangely fast. _Not so different at all_.

At the dead end of the alley he turned, a stag at bay, head lowered to face the wolf. "I am not used to being the prey," he said levelly.

"It does not suit you," the wolf agreed, his voice deep and solemn. "But this evening, I think, is one for...new experiences."

He drew closer, step by careful step, his hand outstretched but not touching. A hands-breadth from the stag's chest it stopped, and Ammar could see it trembling. "Ammar," whispered Rodrigo, his voice hollow through the wolf's mask, "Shall I return to the barracks alone?"

It was not a rhetorical question, and Ammar considered it seriously. Then he smiled, knowing his expression could not be seen through the mask, knowing Rodrigo would hear it in his voice. "What wolf would leave his quarry unsavaged?"

A sharp breath. "What stag would go to its fate willingly?"

Now Ammar lifted the mask so Rodrigo could see his face, the smile on it neither complacent nor yielding. "This one, I believe," he said.

**: : :**

"Your apartments," Rodrigo whispered later, his hands fumbling. "I do not wish to take you against the wall, but I shall if we delay much longer."

The scent of roses and musk mingled heavy in the air, and being taken against a wall didn't seem such a terrible fate, but Ammar tried to force himself to think. "Not there," he said. "Somewhere else. Someplace...that is neither of ours."

"Very well," Rodrigo said, his voice unsteady, and with these words certain events (a meeting with a king, an assassination attempt) slipped out of possibility forever.

Others did not.

But those events were still far away, and it was Carnival night in Ragosa, and the inns always had open rooms.

**: : :**

Ammar absently traced a scar with one finger, his eyes on Rodrigo's face. The ridge of rough tissue ran under his finger with a frisson-- _what sword did he receive this from,_ Ammar thought, and hoped with all his heart the wielder was dead. Part of his mind was composing a poem comparing the scar to a falling star, a streak of pale brilliance across a dusky sky. And another part of his mind was noting that it would surely hinder his movement at times, that it would be a point of weakness in his guard, one that would leave him vulnerable--

\--He silenced that voice in his head by putting his lips to the scar, a benediction and apology. He felt Rodrigo's rumbled laugh beneath his mouth and looked up again with a quick smile.

"Miranda likes to do that," Rodrigo said easily, his eyes half-closed. "Then she tells me I'm a reckless fool who deserves to die young."

"She sounds like an impressive woman," Ammar said, waiting for the stab of jealousy, faintly surprised when there was none. "Should I be worried about meeting her?"

Rodrigo raised an eyebrow. "She has told me she'll kill me if I bed another woman. But she has always said that bonds between comrades are another thing, and if I were to find ease with a fellow warrior..."

"Have you 'found ease' with many comrades?" Ammar said, and _there_ was the pang, a curved dagger twisting.

"Never before tonight," Rodrigo said levelly, meeting his eyes. "And even tonight, I must note there has not been much 'ease' this evening," he added, with a twist to his mouth both wry and smug. "It appears to be my fate to be drawn to fierce and merciless people." He lay still for a moment, his gaze distant. "I love my wife very much," he said. Not an apology, or an explanation. Just a fact.

"Of course you do. But _this_ isn't love," Ammar said without hesitation, only realizing when he said it that it must sound callous, dismissive. He hadn't meant--

But Rodrigo was simply smiling at him, and Ammar saw in his eyes the same knowledge and acceptance. _Such a small word, too small and concise for such a vast and terrifying and primal thing._ "Of course it's not," he replied, and reached for him again.

"I'm thinking of a poem," Ammar said through the growing haze of desire. "About how the moon and the stars are often seen together, and even the sun and moon sometimes share the heavens. But you can never see the sun and the stars in the same sky." His voice was thick, husky. "It would be too much glory to bear," he said.

"But tonight is Carnival night." Rodrigo's voice was a velvet purr against his skin. "And on this one night, anything is possible."

**: : :**

Many people noted that before their final duel on the plain near Silvenes, Ammar ibn Khairan and Rodrigo Belmonte exchanged words. No one ever asked Ammar what he had said to his opponent before taking up the sword that would kill him, and if they had he would not have answered. Deep in some starlit nights, though, he would hear his own voice again, like a stranger's in his ears: _"Whatever may happen this day, for me the sun shall never rise again."_

Ammar ibn Khairan lived to craft many more poems and to love many more men and women. But from the day that he ended the life of Rodrigo Belmonte no other died at his hands, through all the long years to his own end.


End file.
